


World Goes Flat (4x02)

by Zofiecfield



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: F/F, Feelings, One Shot, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:28:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25772842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zofiecfield/pseuds/Zofiecfield
Summary: Time passes and Nicole Haught’s world goes flat.
Relationships: Waverly Earp & Nicole Haught, Waverly Earp/Nicole Haught
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11





	World Goes Flat (4x02)

The first two months fell away, crowded by anger and fear, pouring everything she had into physical survival. Survive so she could fight, so she could bear, so she could pull them to her and draw them home.

She found the cat, who arrived on the doorstep unbidden, driven to her by eerie feline wisdom. It was content to be a barn cat now. An indoor cat for years, it alone seemed to thrive in the new world, lean and pleased with a mouse wriggling between its teeth. She loved it still, but the new hard edge of it fit too neatly into the brittle reality to be of any comfort to her.

She planted a garden in the spring and summer, harvested and packed away, hunted rabbits when she had no choice. Skills from a childhood she’d been glad to leave behind. No joy in it, no relief in the work, but her body had to go on. Placed calls to the empty sheriff's station, until the line went dead. Put her badge on the mantle and left it there to gather dust. 

In the beginning, she counted minutes, hours, days. But time has a way of blurring as it stretches, and now she rarely measures. At any single moment, she could tell, down to the breaths taken, how long they’d been gone. But she can’t let the tick of the hands consume her. To pause, to count time, is a luxury gone now. Except for the middle of the night, when she wakes feverish and disoriented. Startled (over and over, always as sharp) to find herself utterly alone, fearful of the ticking clock she had forgotten. In those moments, she counts, and again. Just to be sure, just to remember.

She keeps the house as it had been, so the memory of them in this space, warm and close and familiar, remains.  
She keeps the house as it had been, though she no longer hears their voices or forgets for a moment as she turns a corner.  
She keeps the house as it had been, though it doesn't hide the passage of time well. 

Hope is heavy, so she wears it as a shotgun, slung across her back. She lets it lie in the quiet metal, when it is too much to bear. Hope comes bound, inextricably, to grief, two sides of the same coin, flipped and still falling. 

Grief is heavier still, kept upstairs on the bed she'd once cherished, pulled over her at night, to the chin. She welcomes the crushing weight of it, steadying as she threatens to fall apart.

She eats little and sleeps less, save for the long stretches of dreamless sleep that catch her off guard and drag her under. Fueled by fear and endlessly stubborn, a body still has its limits.

She stops waiting. Transient verb to be used, fulfilled, discarded. Instead, she becomes waiting. The waiting, the terror and loneliness of it, it etches itself into her. Breathing, fighting, waiting, woman.

The world goes flat.

In another world, another time, she would have resumed reading. Amidst the endless days, she might have found small pleasures again, or started talking absentmindedly to herself like she had. Time passed and passed and passed. But in this world, at war, alone, there is no space, no focus for anything but moving from one moment to the next. There is no ear for anything but listening, no heartbeat for anything but carrying on, no breath for anything but fight, defend.

From the outside, you might have thought she’d been lost too, right along side them. A husk of a woman, left behind. Hollowed and meticulously dismantled by grief and futile fight. 

But, dear reader, you know better and so do I. She is still there, in her entirety, solid and bound together tightly by the resilience of promises made, promises kept, love hard won.

Another set of crunching footsteps. Thank gods for the snow, the summer ground had been so wary. Shoulder the gun and go.


End file.
